A member of the House of Representatives, Mrs Nkeiruka Onyejeocha wants a strong movement of advocacy, activism and support for women advancement in the country .
Mrs.Onyejeocha, who is also the chairperson, House committee on aviation, who stated this at the inauguration of the 7th chairman of the Association of Professional Women Engineers of Nigeria, APWEN and the International Women’s Day in Lagos said there was a strong global momentum striving for gender parity.
According to the lawmaker, gender parity would not happen overnight but the good thing was that women across the globe especially Nigeria were making positive contributions to economic development and sustainability.
She called for more programmes that would create awareness for men and women on the need and imperative of creating enabling environment for women to realise their potentials in the sustainability of global and national economies.
She noted that in the past, women were relegated and subjected to discriminatory treatments including denial of rights of inheritance in family property which affected their education and socio economic empowerment leading to prevalence of poverty among women.
She urged the women engineers to identify barriers to promoting the potentials of women in the sustainability of the economy.
Onyejeocha noted that the Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha rigimes for the first time saw the pursuit of poverty alleviation programmes for women from gender based perspective adding that successive regimes have ensured compliance with the requirements of the 35% affirmative action.
She urged the women engineers to to identify barriers to promoting the potentials of women in the sustainability of the economy
“I, therefore call on women leaders, gender-based organisations and women societies to come to the reality of the fact that women in Nigeria are educationally disadvantaged and that this is a societal and policy challenge that requires urgent attention. Any move to address the total lack or low level of education among Nigerian women will be a step in the right direction and will tremendously boost the chances of harness the potentials of women in the sustainability of the economy”
In her address of welcome, president of the Association of Women Engineers, Mrs. Felicia Agubata said the mission of the body was to stimulate women engineers to achieve professional growth and to provide a mentorship platform for women engineers as well as to be potent voice for the advocacy to get the girl child to take up the study of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Agubata said APWEN has mapped out series of programs to achieve their goal of ‘invent it, build it scheme’ with targets on the girl child in upper primary school classes 5and 6.
In her welcome address, the chairman of Lagos chapter of APWEN, Mrs. Laolu Adedapo Aisida explained that many engineers were unemployed while many young women in engineering were still learning to balance work and home.
According to Aisida, the inability to attain a ballance has resulted in some of them losing out in lucrative jobs adding that her tenure will aim and look into the challenges in a view to helping them strengthen both home and work.
She said young female engineers will be targeted stressing that her tenure will be used to sustain and improve on existing structures which psst leaders have initiated.
Aisida called for team work in order to achieve their goals.
Highlight of the event was the presentation of awards to women engineers who have distinguished themselves in the field of engineering, science and technology.
